As soon as her hazel eyes opened, she knew.

Colors were brighter than before, every detail of his face stood out, and she knew.

He loved her.

He loved her enough to forsake Kylo Ren and become Ben Solo once more.

He loved her enough to succeed where Anakin Skywalker had failed.

She was enough.

Enough to bring him back, enough to be worth saving.

She couldn't hold back the lightning within her, the love she had held for so long, wrestling in her chest in the turbulent storm of the emotions brought on by war and betrayal. She could touch him, feel him under her fingertips, intertwine with him in body and spirit.

She wasn't alone anymore.

She tentatively reached a hand to his face. A part of her feared she would feel nothing and this was another dream, haunting her in the depths of hyperspace. But he did not disintegrate or fade away. He was real, more real than anything she'd ever felt before.

She blinked, a silent question passing through their bond.

Do you want this?

He blinked back, nodding ever so slightly. Yes.

She couldn't hold herself back anymore, and neither could he. They kissed, the only life in the barren valley, the only love this dark world had ever known. The shadows were repelled, and all else was secondary to here and now, to the moment between them.

When they parted, Ben felt unsteady in her arms.

No—not again.

She pulled him into an embrace, twisting her fingers tightly into his clothes. She could not handle another loss, not after everything.

She felt his pulse beneath her, his chest rising and falling, and heard his chuckle in her ear. He squeezed her back.

"Don't worry sweetheart, I'm not going anywhere."


Finn's eyes widened as Rey approached the Falcon.

"No, no, you can't be serious." He blinked and shook his head, as if that would clear away the shadow of Kylo Ren following his friend.

"I can't leave him." Rey's voice cracked as she slipped her hand into Ren's. "Trust me—he's on our side now."

Finn looked from Rey to the former Supreme Leader of the First Order. Something had changed, there was an air of tranquility and self-assurance previously uncharacteristic of Kylo Ren about the man. He even had hints of the swagger of Han Solo in the smile playing around his lips, the wise eyes of the General.

"I trust you." It was a leap of faith, one that he couldn't believe that he was making. But Finn somehow knew that this was right, just as he had known that it was right to not fire on those villagers all those years ago. "Come on, get onboard, we've gotta get out of here."

Rey grabbed his hand and pulled herself and the man who could no longer be called Kylo Ren onto the Millennium Falcon.

There would be plenty of time to explain in the future.


The pyres burned in the Resistance camp, for Princess Leia, for all of the soldiers and the fallen who were retrieved from the final battlefield. On one of those pyres, the helmet of Kylo Ren could be seen, twisted and cracking under the heat of the flames.

It was the confirmation for everyone that the war could no longer continue, with Palpatine, Kylo Ren, and even General Hux dead. Remnants of the Empire and the First Order had retreated to dark corners of the galaxy—but the ashes of the New Republic were certain that they would track them all down again.

Besides, now was the time to celebrate and rebuild. In the drinking of wine, the dancing and the singing, no one paid attention to the stranger beside Rey in a black hood identical to her white one, looking like a bride and groom as they watched the casualties of the final war burn away. It was as if her companion was no more than a ghost.


The twin suns were setting on Tatooine, just as they had nearly thirty-six years ago, on a farm boy who once stood where Rey and Ben did now, dreaming of what could be beyond the horizon. Rey gazed upon the long-forgotten ruins of the Skywalker moisture farm.

Luke had come from similar origins to her, and Anakin Skywalker had come from even similar. They were all just poor desert-rats who had becoming living legends, demigods with swords of light. Even if they didn't feel like the children of gods.

"We'll do better." Ben was the first to speak, to break the silence cast over the ashes and the endless sand.

"We have to." Rey gently squeezed his hand. The lightsaber on her belt hung more heavily than she remembered, with all of the ghosts within. Still, she would not cast it into the sands of Tatooine, as she had initially planned.

It was worth keeping the blade and legacy of the Skywalker family. Death and tragedy wasn't the only story that Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber told. There was the story of great heroes, of deep friendships, and most of all? The love of a father for his son, of a mother for her child, of lifelong friends, of a husband and wife.

The stories laid ahead of Rey and Ben in a loop, a cyclical ring of time—but the love was still there. Throughout the darkest moments, the love persevered, it redeemed, it saved. Anakin, Luke, Leia, Han, Finn, Ben, Rey, and the galaxy.

"Are you ready?" She asked him.

"Always."

They held each others' hands and lifted their free ones as the winds shifted. The sunset was blotted out by the golden shimmering sand, turning the sky gold in a sandstorm. In the middle of its eye, Rey and Ben could have easily been the only people in the whole world.

As soon as it started, it stopped, and a dune rested over where the Skywalkers once lived, becoming a tomb lost to time.

It was better that way.

"Come on, sweetheart, let's go home."

Rey followed Ben into the desert, now surrounded by millions of stars, the Falcon in the distance glowing in the pale light of the twin moons.